<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>goodnight, darling 🎄 by 8glassesofmilkin3minutes</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312233">goodnight, darling 🎄</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/8glassesofmilkin3minutes/pseuds/8glassesofmilkin3minutes'>8glassesofmilkin3minutes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>my dear boy 🎁 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Red White &amp; Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Christmas Fluff, Family Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, cookie-making, grandparent-impressing, historical love letters, nail-painting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:48:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>865</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312233</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/8glassesofmilkin3minutes/pseuds/8glassesofmilkin3minutes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex makes a list of the people Henry gives a little of his day-after-Christmas to</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>my dear boy 🎁 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2073516</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>goodnight, darling 🎄</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you @jerejeann from Tumblr for<a> this beautiful post</a> that inspired a part of this fic.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Weirdly, Alex doesn’t end up spending too much of the day after Christmas with Henry. If someone had told him that was going to happen beforehand, he would’ve been disappointed. But the way Henry spends his day at the White House is far from disappointing, and as Alex sits alone at his desk that night, the book Henry gave him open before him, pencil in hand as he annotates it because he just couldn’t help himself, he starts to make a list. A mental list of all the people Henry gave a little of his day to. </p><p>1. The kitchen staff. The kitchen staff who had yesterday and Christmas Eve off, and were clearing out the leftovers of last night’s dinner. In the morning, Alex found Henry among them, rolling out a sheet of dough, Christmas-themed cookie cutters scattered across the counter, flour on his sweater and a little on his face. Alex stood in the doorway and smiled, and when Henry looked up and noticed him, he said, “They said they had extra!” He was cutting a little tree out of the dough. Alex just laughed and walked over to him, and Henry kissed him as he approached. Right there in front of everyone, Henry kissed him.</p><p>At his desk, Alex yawns.</p><p>
  <em>Ah, my darling, it is so good to really be all myself to love you again.</em>
</p><p>2. Bela and Tito. Yet again, the both of them seemed ensnared by Henry’s charm. The two of them had gone for a walk around the reflecting pool in the afternoon, and when, a couple of hours later, they were nowhere to be found, an agent directed Alex outside. Alex found them sitting on a bench with two things on the ground near them—a half-empty bag of birdseed, and Henry, his arms around his knees, answering Bela’s inquiry about what Christmas was like in London. It was well past the early winter sunset, and as Alex requested they all come back inside, walking a few paces behind his grandparents he whispered to Henry, “Looks like they’ve found a new favorite grandson.”</p><p>“Was it you, before?” Henry asked. </p><p>Alex laughed. “Oh, no. Definitely not.”</p><p>Alex rests the side of his face against the surface of his desk, and he lifts the book in a way that allows the lamp to illuminate it as he continues reading.</p><p>
  <em>The moon is full and the lake lies still and lovely —</em>
</p><p>3. June. Alex was coming back up to his room after saying hi to Zahra, who had just returned from New Orleans, when he heard laughter from across the hall. June’s door was cracked open, and Alex knocked once and pushed it open the rest of the way. Henry was holding the back of his hand up to his mouth as he laughed, and June was laughing, too, as they sat together on her bed, but she grabbed Henry’s hand and pulled it back down to a magazine she had spread open over her blanket. </p><p>“Be careful, Henry! They’re still wet!” </p><p>Henry’s nails were being painted a pattern of red and green, with golden glitter on both ring fingers, Alex saw as he came closer. </p><p>“Do you like them?” Henry held out his finished hand to Alex.</p><p>“I love them,” Alex grinned.</p><p>Alex, attempting to stay up until Henry returned to his room, starts to lose the battle against his heavy eyelids.</p><p>
  <em>this place is like Heaven — and I am in love with life.</em>
</p><p>He drifts off. </p><p>He thinks he hears a faint <em>clink</em> on one side of his head. Then, he feels himself just barely come to as his reading glasses are being gently slid off of his face.</p><p>When he lifts his head, he can tell it’s been a little while. There’s a pillow under his face and a quilt draped around him, over his desk chair. His glasses are folded and placed a few inches away. And Henry sits on Alex’s bed, in his pajamas, glancing at his phone with one earbud in. </p><p>“Henry?” Alex wipes a bit of drool away from his mouth with his sleeve.</p><p>“Alex.” Henry looks up with a soft smile. </p><p>Alex sees the source of the earlier clink—there’s a plate on his desk, stacked with an assortment of cookies. The one on top is tree-shaped. It’s messily frosted green, and there are tiny red hearts piped all over it. Alex looks over at Henry.</p><p>Henry laughs. “They’re the ones I made earlier—or, they helped me make. It was fun. I just brought some in case you might be awake.”</p><p>Alex’s heart aches, in a good way. He shoves a bite of it into his mouth, holds onto the quilt wrapped around his shoulders and walks over to his bed, to Henry. </p><p>“Sorry we didn’t spend much time together today,” Henry starts. “I—<em>oomf</em>.” Alex tosses himself onto Henry’s chest, curls up against him, and closes his eyes. </p><p>“It’s okay,” Alex reassures him sleepily. Muffled against Henry’s body, he adds, “I love you.”</p><p>Henry pauses for a beat, then strokes Alex’s hair, and drops a kiss in it.</p><p>“I love you, too.”</p><p>
  <em>Goodnight, darling.<br/>
—Margaret Mead to Ruth Benedict, 1933</em>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>♡</p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I’m about to get real emotional, bear with me. </p><p>It’s technically Christmas now, it’s 3 AM. So, one year and one day ago I posted, on Tumblr, my first RWRB fic, a few days later posting it here as well. It was a Christmas fic like this one.</p><p>I ended up writing... a lot of RWRB fics, reading them, too, and reading RWRB more times after that, with other people, in fact. I don’t think I’m gonna write an essay about what the book means to me here in these end notes, but I will just say, it means a lot. And finding a world and ship I loved gave me so much room to write and experiment with ideas I never would’ve conceptualized or executed without them.</p><p>I had a Christmas AU oneshot idea I was planning to write and post today, that I think I’m still gonna write, but as I sat here and thought about how long it’s been, I also thought about the fact that no matter how many AU’s I read &amp; write, my favorite Alex &amp; Henry will always be <em>the</em> Alex &amp; Henry, so they were the ones I wanted to write about tonight.</p><p>So much has changed in a year, but I’m so glad I got the chance to write so many things and share them with so many people. </p><p>Merry Christmas, and goodnight, darling. For now.</p><div class="center">
  <p>❤️💚✨</p>
</div></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>